And Esther told the King in Mordechai's name ...

God’s name may be hidden in the Megillat Esther, but the name of Esther does appear in Pirkei Avot, along with that of Mordechai. The only citation in Avot of the megillah comes at Avot 6:6, where the 48^th and final element of acquiring Torah is to quote the source from which you have learned something. The tail-end of this magnificent baraita reads as follows:

וְהָאוֹמֵר דָּבָר בְּשֵׁם אוֹמְרוֹ, הָא לָמַֽדְתָּ, כָּל הָאוֹמֵר דָּבָר בְּשֵׁם אוֹמְרוֹ, מֵבִיא גְאֻלָּה לָעוֹלָם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: וַתֹּֽאמֶר אֶסְתֵּר לַמֶּֽלֶךְ בְּשֵׁם מָרְדְּכָי

…and saying something in the name of its speaker. Thus you learn: Everyone who says something in the name of the one who says it brings redemption to the world, as it states (Esther 2:22): "And Esther told the king in the name of Mordechai”.

What was it that Esther told the king? That Mordechai had overheard the plot of Bigtan and Teresh to overthrow him. This piece of useful service to the crown was duly recorded in the state annals and it was this that King Ahasuerus read during about of insomnia, leading ultimately to the downfall of Haman and to the Jews being saved from the massacre that was awaiting them.

The verse in Megillat Esther applies to sourcing information of a sensitive political nature, involving state security. Our Baraita takes it into another area entirely by applying it to learning Torah.

The idea of naming the person who originates an item of Torah learning is a particularization of the same principle that opens the tractate of Avot (1:1) by reciting the chain of tradition leading from the Sinaitic revelation to the era of the Men of the Great Assembly. Subsequent mishnayot provide further links in the chain by name-checking the rabbis through whom it passes. By doing this we can establish the authenticity of any teaching by making sure that it is derived from a trustworthy source.

This guidance is highly regarded, to the extent that, according to Rabbi Elazar Ezkari (Sefer Charedim 47.1), it is actually forbidden to fail to give the name of a person who first gave over a teaching.

Our baraita contains an apparent paradox: whoever cites the name of the originator of a piece of learning when he quotes it will bring redemption to the world—but the Baraita does not name the originator of this statement. More than that, the compiler of this perek of Avot does not even name the baraita’s author. For the record, The name of the Tanna Rabbi Yose is twice found in close proximity to this maxim where it appears in the Babylonian Talmud (Chullin 104b and Niddah 19b) but nowhere is it stated that he is its author. In Megillah 15b the same principle is taught in the name of later rabbis (the Amora Rabbi Elazar teaching it in the name of an earlier Amora, Rabbi Chanina).

The Maharsha (Megillah 15b) speculates that no question is raised regarding its authorship since it is only a baraita, not a mishnah, and that the Amora Rabbi Elazar, who cites this learning in the name of Rabbi Chanina, may have done so because he was unfamiliar with its existence as a baraita. Even so, regardless of its authorship and the reason, if any, for not citing it, the maxim retains its force: the correct citation of one’s sources can enhance both the transparency and the authority of one’s arguments, leading to their acceptance where they are correct and to their dismissal or refutation where they are not.

Every rule seems to have its exceptions and the Babylonian Talmud does record for us a number of examples where this principle is plainly disregarded in favour of false  attribution. This occurs where Amoraim discern a greater good which only false attribution can achieve—this greater good frequently being framed as a means of persuading the Jewish population at large to accept an undoubtedly correct halachic ruling which, if learned in the name of its true author, would carry considerably less weight. For those who want to know more. There is a review of the deployment of false attribution in the Talmud and elsewhere, the circumstances in which it may be tolerated and the responses of commentators ancient and modern in Marc B. Shapiro, Changing the Immutable: How Orthodox Judaism Rewrites Its History, in Chapter 8 (“Is the Truth Really That important?”).

Not all rabbis in the era of the Amoraim respected our name-your-source principle. A revealing passage in the Talmud (Bechorot 31b) deals with an answer that Rav Sheshet had given to a particular question:

Rav Idi was the attendant of Rav Sheshet. He heard [Rav Sheshet’s answer] from him and proceeded to mention it in the Bet Midrash, but did not cite it in his [i.e. Rav Sheshet’s] name. Rav Sheshet heard about this and was annoyed. He exclaimed: “He who has stung me--a scorpion should sting him!” [The Talmud then asks] “But what practical difference did this make to Rav Sheshet?”

The Talmud then explains that, where a person repeats what he has learned together with the name of the person from whom he learnt it, it is as though his teacher lives in two worlds: the World he occupies during his lifetime and, after he dies, when he “lives” in the World to Come since the lips of scholars murmur in their graves when their names are mentioned. On the subject of names, when Rav Sheshet invites the scorpion to sting Rav Idi, he does not mention his attendant’s name—possibly because Rav Sheshet’s father had the same name (Pesachim 49a), it being regarded as disrespectful for a son to utter his father’s name, whether during his life and thereafter.

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Pirkei Avot, politics and a job not yet done

Readers of the Jewish Insider for 9 November will have come across a piece by Gabby Deutsch titled “Shapiro, citing Pirkei Avot, sails to victory in PA”. You can access this article here or on the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle for 10 November here.

The operative part of this piece reads as follows:

As anxious Democrats around the country waited for election results to come in on Tuesday night, a jubilant crowd of more than a thousand was in a celebratory mood from the moment they walked into Josh Shapiro’s election night party at a convention center on the far edges of the Philadelphia exurbs.

While vulnerable Democrats elsewhere in the state struggled in close races that remain undecided, Shapiro was declared the victor by the Associated Press shortly after midnight, leading Doug Mastriano by more than 500,000 votes.

“I spoke a lot about my faith in this campaign. My family and my faith call me to service and they drive me home,” Shapiro told a cheering crowd in a triumphant victory address. “You’ve heard me read Scripture before, that no one is required to complete the task, but neither are we free to refrain from it, meaning each of us has a responsibility to get off the sidelines, to get in the game and to do our part. And so I say to you tonight, that while we won this race — and by the way, won it pretty convincingly … the job is not done. The task is not complete”.

While I am always glad to see evidence that Pirkei Avot courses through the veins of any Jew, this report leaves me somewhat uncomfortable. I wonder if I am not alone in my discomfort.

The sentiment of not being required to finish the task but also not being free to refrain from it is a laudable one where the task in question is a meritorious though onerous one. But what is the nature of the duty in the quote before us? Rabbi Tarfon, who teaches this at Avot 2:21, was a Torah sage who sought both to live by the Torah’s precepts and to encourage others to do likewise. As that mishnah’s context shows, it has always been understood within the Jewish tradition of scholarship that Rabbi Tarfon was speaking about the task of learning the Torah and observing its many mitzvot. Once this teaching is detached from that objective, the task is whatever the speaker defines it to be and it is thereby reduced to the level of a simple platitude. If this is so, the words spoken here by the victor equally well be spoken by the vanquished, with reference to the task of persisting with his hitherto less popular policies and making a greater effort to persuade the electorate of their benefit.

The English language is rich in platitudes and cliches about not quitting and carrying on to the bitter end, as well as about it being more important to do the right thing than to secure the desired end. I think I would have greatly preferred it if one of them was used here.

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Another point arising from this speech is whether the speaker should have quoted this teaching in Rabbi Tarfon’s name (as mandated in Avot 6:6). While it is customary in Jewish learning circles to do just that, the citation of the name of so eminent a Torah scholar in the case before us might have created the false impression that the victorious candidate’s candidacy or policies were somehow in line with Rabbi Tarfon’s philosophy of life. On balance, therefore, it may be justifiable to omit any mention of Rabbi Tarfon’s name.

 

Purim and Pirkei Avot 2: Citing a teaching in the name of its originator

This is the second of three short posts that link Pirkei Avot to the festival of Purim (this coming Thursday for most of the world, Friday for Jerusalem and any city that was walled at the time of Joshua).

A baraita at Avot 6:6 lists 48 things that are said to be ways of acquiring Torah. Of these, the 48th and final item is

"repeating a saying in the name of the one who says it".

The baraita concludes by making the only reference to the Book of Esther that can be found within Avot, adding:

"whoever says something in the name of the person who says it brings redemption to the world, as it is said: 'And Esther spoke to the king in the name of Mordechai'" (Esther 2:22).

What was it that Esther told the king? It was the information, overheard by Mordechai, that Bigtan and Teresh were plotting against him.

The idea of mentioning by name the person who originates an item of Torah learning is a conceptualisation of the same principle that opens the tractate of Avot, where the chain of tradition is charted from the Torah's Sinaitic revelation to the era of the Men of the Great Assembly and then down through the various rabbis whose words we find in the Mishnah and Talmud. It is important to know the name of the person who relates a teaching to others so that its authenticity can be verified -- or challenged.

Our baraita at Avot 6:6 presents us with a paradox: we learn that whoever cites the name of the originator of a piece of learning when he quotes it will bring redemption to the world – but it does not reveal the identity of its own author, of of the author of the statement about bringing redemption to the world.

Are there any clues as to its authorship? The name of Rabbi Yose is twice found in close proximity to citations of this maxim (at Chullin104b, Niddah 19b) but it is nowhere stated that he is its author. In Megillah 15b the same principle is taught in the name of later rabbis (where the Amora Rabbi Elazar teaches it in the name of an earlier Amora, Rabbi Chanina).

Regardless of its authorship and the reason, if any, for not citing it, the maxim retains its force: the correct citation of one’s sources can enhance both the transparency and the authority of one’s arguments, leading to their acceptance where they are correct and to their dismissal or refutation where they are not. The Babylonian Talmud does however preserve a number of examples where this principle is discarded in favour of false attribution, where the rabbis discern a greater good which only false attribution can achieve – this greater good frequently being framed as a means of persuading the Jewish population at large to accept an undoubtedly correct halachic ruling which, if learned in the name of its true author, would carry considerably less weight (see Marc B. Shapiro, Changing the Immutable: How Orthodox Judaism Rewrites Its History, in Chapter 8 (“Is the Truth Really That important?”).